July 2007

07/15/2007

This is a cautionary tale.
It is a story of mice and men, of fur and plastic and, ultimately, tragedy. It
begins sometime this past spring. I had been doing a fair bit
of cutting inside the house with the chop saw, creating a sizeable amount of
sawdust. Time to break out the Shop-Vac. We hadn’t used it since last fall, I
think, when we were sucking up water from the basement before we had the roof
on. I dragged it out, , plugged it in, and turned it on. Holy socks, why is it
whining like a jet engine? And what is that burning smell? And where is the
suction? Ah, I forgot to change the settings and filters from wet to dry. No
big deal. So I swap the filters and make the adjustments. Same result. I dink
around with it a little more, become frustrated, and put it in the corner,
resorting to the broom and dustpan.A few weeks later I had an odd hour or so
left at the end of the day. Wondering what to do, my eye strayed over to the
vacuum. Ok, let’s rock, I thought (how embarrassing that I actually think in
these terms). Over the past few weeks I had dug out the manual and fiddled with
it a bit more, all to no avail. That day, I was determined to make it work.I started to take it apart, piece by
piece. After removing a few covers and plates which clearly warned ‘DO NOT
REMOVE’, I finally could get a little view of the motor, which to my novice
eye, looked fine. I flipped it over and peered into the intake area, which was
a bit obscured by some protective caging. Hmm, looks like some string or
something is wound up in there. Maybe that is the problem. I get a long drill
bit and start to pull this grayish fluff out from the innards of the vacuum
motor. Man, what is this stuff? It almost looks like…hey, is that a tail? Oh,
crap.Through some careful extraction and
forensic techniques, I think I can paint an accurate picture of what happened
to the Shop Vac. At some point in late fall, perhaps early winter, a mouse
snuck into the house, looking for a warm place to bed down. It sees a long
tube, crawls up it, and ends up in a cozy den. What a perfect place to sleep
and store food. So he does. All is well until someone decides to turn on the 12
horsepower motor. Then, all is not so well. Frankly, things are decidedly
unwell. But, at least he didn’t have time to ponder what was going on. Based on
the position of the remains, I believe death was swift and humane, and probably
beat being eaten by an owl or fox. Thus ends the tail.